Researchershave expose the remainsof a giant otter in China that when alive would have been comparable to the size of a wolf . The fogy belong to to a fresh species of ancient otter , hump asSiamogale melilutra , that lived in freshwater lakes around 6 million years ago .
grounds of the giant otter had been discovered before , but only in the form of a few break up tooth discover in Thailand . This late find of a over cranium , mandible , teeth , and other skeletal bits and British shilling immensely elaborate what was previously known about the animals , and gives further indications to the monolithic size of the metal money .
presently , the largest go otter coinage – the elephantine otters of the Amazon River – reach up to around 1.8 meters ( 6 understructure ) and count in at about 32 kilograms ( 70 lbf. ) , but this ancient otter from China would have occur in at almost twice its size . The researchers estimate thatS. melilutrawould have weighed around 50 kilograms ( 110 pounds ) , with a skull shadow that of its modern cousin . This makes the ancient animal one of thelargest hump species of otterever to have existed .
The skull of S. melilutra is almost twice the size of it of the largest living speices of otter , P. brasilensis . X. Wang et al . 2016
The fauna has been namedS. melilutra – a chemical compound of “ genus Meles ” , which refers to badger , and “ lutra ” , which denotes otter – due to its mixing of otter- and badger - like skull and tooth . The cheek teeth are of interest because they are what is acknowledge as bunodont , which means they have round off cusps . This paint a picture that the giant otters had cranial and dental version to feed in the main on tumid shellfish and shellfish , fossils of which are also abundant in the same level of careen that the skull was determine .
“ Multiple otter filiation have low - coronate bunodont teeth , leading us to inquire the interrogative if this was inherit from a common root or if this was convergent development based on common dietetic behaviors across dissimilar coinage , ” explains Dr Xiaoming Wang , who co - author the paper published in theJournal of Systematic Palaeontology , in astatement . " Our phylogenetic analysis suggest that bunodont dentition independently appear at least three meter over the evolutionary chronicle of otter . ”
The research worker were also able to retrace the surroundings in which the otters lived , describing it as a “ quaggy , shallow lake with quite dumb vegetation , " presumably not unlike the forests in which forward-looking elephantine otter live today . /
